Smart guns — guns that will operate only for their owners — are a hot topic, hotter still since President Obama issued an executive order last week calling for more research and development on the technology. Obama may use government purchasing power to leverage reform — a path New York City and other jurisdictions are also considering.

All would be welcome. But new technology does nothing about the 350 million guns Americans already own. And because of that, and because of the broader American gun culture that technology is powerless to change, smart guns are ultimately a false hope.

The need for someone to take dead aim at America’s gun problem is irrefutable. Among Western nations, the U.S. is an outlier on firearms per capita, with more guns in civilian hands than civilians to carry them. It’s also an outlier on firearms deaths. Americans are almost five times more likely to die by gunshot than Canadians, and 11 times more likely than Australians.

The U.S. is also unique in its attitudes about guns. In no other Western nation is it normal to carry a concealed handgun. And in no other Western nation is it normal to keep a loaded gun handy in a drawer or in the glove box.

Keeping loaded guns handy kills. Kids find them and shoot themselves, or others. American kids under 15 are nine times more likely to die in gun accidents than kids in other developed nations. Suicide, too, is largely a matter of availability: an impulsive act made easy by the apparently painless expedient of a pistol.

And stolen guns flow steadily into the criminal black market, exacting a daily toll of lives.

Other developed nations have laws requiring gun owners to keep unused guns unloaded and securely locked. I’m Canadian: My own guns remain unloaded and locked in a safe when I’m not using them.

Not so in the fearful armed camp that is 21st-century America. In thrall to a fear-driven culture of total preparedness, too many Americans keep guns loaded and ready at all times.

This is the problem smart guns purport to solve. But though well-intended, smart guns are not a solution. They’re an admission of defeat to that perverse instinct.

Technology won’t fix this for us

In looking to technology, we concede that the culture of fear can’t be dispelled, that the vision of America promoted by the gun lobby — an America awash in loaded guns in its homes and its schools and its churches — can’t be overcome.

The true power of the NRA and its allies is found not at the ballot box, but in its ability to shape the discourse. Today, just about every conversation on gun safety occurs on their terms.

The NRA’s perpetual refrain that mass shootings are a mental-health problem has put mental health at the top of the agenda, although in fact the mentally ill are no more violent than any of us.

A specious interpretation of the Second Amendment has become law through a Supreme Court dazzled by pseudo-scholarship.

The notion that more guns mean less crime, which research firmly rejects, is accepted by millions.

America’s culture of readiness is unique, and it is unjustified: As the NRA is quick to point out when it suits them, violent crime has fallen dramatically in the last two decades. Yet for pro-gun extremists, the mere suggestion that loaded guns shouldn’t be kept handy amounts to a call for disarmament.

Research and development of smart guns is a good thing. Someday, hundreds of years from now, maybe all guns will be smart guns. Until then, technology can’t solve America’s gun problem. Only people can.